Chapter 1: Nineteen Years of Two-Dollar Dreams
Every Friday for nineteen years, I bought the same lottery ticket with the same six numbers, and every Friday, my husband found a way to make me feel foolish for it.
“Throwing money in the toilet again, Patty?””
Gary Dunn would say it without taking his eyes off the television, usually with a little chuckle that made the insult sound like a joke. That way, if I ever got offended, he could accuse me of having no sense of humor.
I learned a long time ago that some people liked hurting you more when they could convince you that you were being ridiculous for feeling it.
So I would take my two dollars to the gas station on the highway, buy my ticket, drive home, and slide it beneath the cheap pineapple magnet on our refrigerator.
The numbers never changed.
They were our three children's birthdays, our wedding anniversary, and the date my mother died.
I wasn't superstitious, exactly. I simply liked the idea that the people who had shaped my life might somehow help me change it.
For thirty-four years, I had been Patricia Dunn, wife, mother, cook, housekeeper, peacemaker, and the woman who remembered everybody else's appointments while forgetting to make time for herself.
Our children were grown. Denise lived outside Charlotte with her husband and their two boys. Michael worked construction in Tennessee. Our youngest, Renee, had recently moved to Atlanta to start a nursing program.
I was proud of all three of them.
Gary, on the other hand, seemed to regard their independence as a personal inconvenience. He complained about the cost of visiting them, the length of their phone calls, and the fact that they sometimes asked me for advice instead of him.
When they were little, he had been different—or perhaps I had simply been too busy raising children to recognize how much of him was already there.
He could be charming when he wanted something. He could make an entire room laugh. At church picnics, he told stories that left people slapping their knees. At family gatherings, he played the devoted husband so convincingly that women would pull me aside to tell me how lucky I was.
Nobody saw what happened after the guests went home.
They didn't see him criticize the dinner I'd spent three hours preparing. They didn't hear him complain that I had bought the wrong brand of coffee, even when he'd never told me which brand he wanted. They didn't watch him leave every difficult conversation unfinished because he knew I would eventually get tired of arguing.
I used to believe marriage meant learning which battles weren't worth fighting.
By our thirtieth anniversary, I had become very good at surrendering.
Then came the lottery ticket that changed everything.
That week, my older sister, Gloria, was admitted to the regional hospital after suffering a frightening complication from a heart condition she'd managed for years. I drove into the city almost every day, carrying fresh clothes, magazines, and the kind of snacks hospital cafeterias never seemed to have.
I barely slept.
On Saturday morning, I was supposed to check the winning numbers over coffee. Instead, my phone rang before I could sit down. Gloria had had a rough night, and I needed to get back to the hospital.
By Wednesday afternoon, I finally noticed the pineapple magnet holding nothing.
I stood in front of the refrigerator, staring at the empty space as if the ticket might materialize if I looked hard enough.
“Gary?””
He was stretched out on the couch, watching a daytime courtroom show.
“Have you seen my lottery ticket?””
“Your what?””
“My ticket. The one under the pineapple.””
He glanced toward the kitchen, then back at the television.
“Probably fell behind the fridge. It's two bucks, Patty.””
“I always put it in the same place.””
“Then maybe you should start putting it somewhere important.””
I stared at him.
He didn't even bother to look at me again.
I pulled the refrigerator away from the wall as far as I could manage, found dust, a bottle cap, and one of the children's old plastic game pieces, but no ticket.
I checked the trash. I checked the counter. I even looked inside the drawer where I kept takeout menus and expired coupons.
Nothing.
That evening, something peculiar happened.
Gary made me tea.
Not coffee, which he drank every morning and which he occasionally prepared for himself. Tea. The way I liked it, with a little honey.
He carried it into the living room and set it beside me.
“How's Gloria doing?””
I nearly dropped my phone.
For ten years, Gary had barely asked about my sister's health. He called her dramatic when she complained about pain and accused her of enjoying attention whenever she talked about her medical appointments.
Now he was standing beside me with a cup of tea.
“She's hanging in there,” I answered cautiously.
“Good. Good.””
He lingered for a moment, then sat down beside me.
“You've been running yourself ragged. You need to take it easy.””
I looked at him, searching his face for some sign of the man I remembered from our early years, the one who used to bring me flowers just because he saw them at the grocery store.
All I found was an unfamiliar brightness in his eyes.
He asked whether I wanted him to pick up dinner the next day.
He offered to fill my car with gas.
Before bed, he even kissed my forehead.
I lay awake long after he began snoring.
Something was wrong.
I didn't know what, but my instincts had begun whispering that the missing ticket wasn't the only thing I needed to worry about.
Thursday morning, I went to the kitchen and unfolded the local newspaper while my coffee brewed.
The lottery results were printed near the bottom of the second page.
I read the first number.
Then the second.
By the fourth, my fingers had begun to tremble.
I read all six again.
Then a third time.
They were my numbers.
Every single one.
The article stated that one winning ticket had been sold at the gas station on the main highway. The jackpot was $2.4 million, and the winner had not yet come forward.
The newspaper slipped from my hands.
I sank onto the kitchen floor, my back against the cabinets, unable to breathe properly.
Two point four million dollars.
I thought about the mortgage payments we struggled to make. The roof that leaked whenever it rained hard enough. The medical bills I'd put on a credit card because we couldn't afford to pay them all at once. The retirement savings that seemed to shrink every time we needed new tires or another appliance.
I thought about Gloria.
I thought about my children.
I thought about how many times I'd told myself that a little extra money would make life easier, not because I wanted diamonds or expensive vacations, but because I wanted to stop worrying every time an envelope arrived in the mail.
Then I remembered the missing ticket.
And Gary's sudden kindness.
And the way he'd kept patting the pocket of his jeans that morning, as if checking for something.
My heart began beating so hard I could feel it in my throat.
I didn't confront him.
I didn't call my children.
I didn't even tell him I had seen the newspaper.
Instead, I folded it carefully, placed it on the table, and went about my day as though nothing had changed.
I washed the breakfast dishes. I watered the tomato plants in the backyard. I swept the kitchen floor.
Gary watched me from the doorway.
“You all right, Patty?””
“Just tired.””
He studied me for a second too long.
Then he smiled.
“Well, get some rest.””
That night, I heard him speaking on the telephone in the garage.
I couldn't make out the other person's words, but I heard him say, “Tomorrow morning. I'm taking care of everything tomorrow morning.””
When he came inside, he found me folding towels.
He didn't ask what I was doing.
He simply watched me with the guarded expression of a man who believed he had already won.
I folded the last towel and placed it in the linen closet.
For the first time in nineteen years, I didn't care whether the lottery ticket was lucky.
May you like
I cared about what my husband had done with it.
And I was about to find out.
